No Music Day

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Tomorrow is No Music Day. No Music? Why, in the name of god, it’s madness. Or maybe not. The brainchild of KLF founder Bill Drummond, No Music Day is akin to a 24 hour fast for the ears, to make us stop and take stock of what we’re piping into our heads via our ears everyday and appreciate that there is quality to be found buried amid the big pile of commercialism that’s literally shoved in our faces, or ears, everyday. The 21st of November holds significance as it is the day before St. Cecelia’s Day – patron saint of music.

When I first heard that a bunch of people were swearing off music for the day, it took me a while to grasp the reasoning behind it. Music is something that plays such a huge role in so many of our lives and penetrates every facet of our day – and perhaps therein lies the pickle. We as a society, now more than ever, consume music as if it were going out of fashion. Nobody does this more so than those in the music industry – always looking for ‘the next big thing’, always striving to satisfy some driving aural hunger within ourselves by shifting through a constant stream of sonic piss that has no place on our airwaves or in our heads. Well Enough! I will be taking part in No Music Day, having my own reasons to not just mechanically accept whatever it is that Phantom and the likes decide to bestow upon us daily. Bill Drummond’s reason’s can be read in this wonderful article, with the following hammering home how his unquenchable thirst for QUALITY music proved exasperatingly unsatisfactory….

“Some years ago I walked into HMV Oxford Street. I wandered around rack upon rack of thousands upon thousands of CDs. There must have been every form of music that ever existed there. I wanted something new. Something that would make me go, ‘Yeah, this is it. I’ve never heard anything like this in my life.’ There have been so many times when I have read a review of an album telling me how great it was so I would go out and buy it, only to get it home to find it sounded like something I had already heard. There was nothing in HMV Oxford Street for me.

So I went home and searched every corner of the web for something new, fresh, exciting. Something that would make me hear music in a different way. Something that would open a door to a room in my head which I had never been in before. But even in those furthest corners I could find nothing that did this.“

Whether you decide to participate or not is your own business, some may decide that it’s the most idiotic thing they’ve ever heard… but it’s certainly food for though.